« State Department to Stop Publishing Patterns of Global Terrorism | Main | The Roots of U.S.-French Enmity »
April 18, 2005
Hobsbawm Describes an 'Assembly of Political Ghosts" From the 1980s
The London Review of Books has a thought-provoking essay by Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm titled "An Assembly of Ghosts" It's about "a fans chance to pay tribute to a hero, even a tragic hero." The fan is Mr. Hobsbawm and the hero is former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whom the fan met at this year's World Political Forum in Turn, Italy, March 4-6. The forum, according to Mr. Hobsbawm , attracted "Upwards of a hundred middle-aged and elderly men and the usual handful of women are sitting at one side of a long rectangle of tables, in the hall of a military academy in Victor Emmanuel baroque, looking at each other across a wide space and listening to simultaneous translations from and into the usual languages plus Polish (the Poles have sent two ex-presidents of very different views, and an ex-premier). At right angles to me, at the top table, I observe the shrunken, sharp-eyed Giulio Andreotti, seven times Italian prime minister between 1972 and 1992, the stiff-backed military figure of General (later President) Jaruzelski, who suppressed Solidarity and negotiated the end of Polish Communism, and Mikhail Gorbachev himself, amazingly well-preserved, handsome and affable, but looking smaller than he is next to his huge neighbour, Helmut Kohl, the longest-serving chancellor of the Germany he reunified in 1990. A place has been kept for ex-president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who was late in arriving from Brazil. Even a cynical old historian is impressed by such a line-up.
Mr. Hobsbawm, who said "I can recall no experience like it, described the gathering as an "assembly of political ghosts. Read more here.
Posted by Munir Umrani at April 18, 2005 05:05 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.thediplomatictimes.info/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/217
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Hobsbawm Describes an 'Assembly of Political Ghosts" From the 1980s:
» Adult Page - Index from Adult Page - Index
Wivesinpantyhose Mikes apartment Boyforboy [Read More]
Tracked on September 23, 2005 04:04 AM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)